Pikeville man charged with robbery months after early release

By Russ Cassady, Staff Writer

A circuit judge will decide next month whether to temporarily halt the release of inmates under a program approved in this year’s state budget designed to help cut corrections costs.

But, according to Pike Commonwealth’s Attorney Rick Bartley, the effects of the early release program are already being felt here, and he is pointing to a local case as an example of why the program is not working.

“I think the early release program is clearly going to endanger the public,” he said. “These people are criminals. They are convicted criminals who have gone to prison. We know from statistics that there is a very high rate that they’re going to offend again.”

To release these people from jail early, according to Bartley, is just going to increase the number of convicted criminals on the streets at any given time.

“They are going to hurt, kill, rape, rob and commit other serious crimes,” he said.

According to Bartley, Joseph K. Edmonds is a beneficiary of the new prison sentence calculations and also serves as an example of its problems.

This week, a Pike grand jury indicted Edmonds, 21, of Pikeville, on several charges, including first-degree robbery, just a few months after he was released early under the initiative.

According to documents provided by Bartley, nine people convicted of crimes in Pike County have seen early release, in some cases having more than two years knocked off their sentences.

So far, Edmonds is the only one of the nine under the early release program who has been charged in Pike County since his release.

Edmonds has been charged with several traffic crimes since his July release, court documents show.

But, the most serious of the crimes alleged is the one which resulted in this week’s indictment.

According to court documents, on Sept. 26, Pikeville police responded to a complaint of a robbery at Velocity Market.

Pikeville Police Officer Michael Riddle wrote in the citation that when he arrived on scene, he spoke with the victim, Jason Syck, who told Riddle a male subject grabbed his wallet and took off running.

Syck chased Edmonds down, he told the officer, and grabbed Edmonds’ shirt, according to court documents, at which time Edmonds struck Syck with a metal pipe. Edmonds was later caught and identified by Syck, the citation said.

According to the citation, officers went to Edmonds’ house to search for the wallet and money, alleged to be more than $500, and found in Edmonds’ room a Pikeville College gym bag with shorts and shoes with the school’s logo on them.

Riddle wrote that the items found in the bag are only issued to members of the college’s basketball team and are not sold. The items had been reported as stolen by the college on Sept. 17, according to court documents.

Edmonds has an extensive criminal history in Pike County, including multiple theft convictions, as well as an escape charge on which he was convicted last year. According to court documents, Edmonds and another inmate at the Pike County Detention Center walked away from work release in Nov., 2006. Edmonds was later caught and pleaded guilty to the escape charge.

Bartley said the biggest problem with the early release program is that it is “painting with a broad brush.” Instead of looking at individuals to decide which ones don’t present a danger, he said, the Department of Corrections is just saying “anyone who has this amount of time, let’s turn them loose.”

The parole credit program, under which Edmonds was released, was authorized under the state’s budget bill this year. The Associated Press reported last week the early release program was passed as a cost-saving maneuver, aimed at offsetting prison costs. The program was expected to save about $12.5 million on the inmates who have already been released, the Associated Press reported.

Bartley said prosecutors have tried to offer alternatives to help ease the burden of growing costs of incarcerating criminals, such as making $1,000 the amount at which a theft becomes a felony. Currently any theft that is valued at more than $300 is a felony.

“That was shot down summarily,” Bartley said. “So they’re talking about releasing people with long prison sentences, which are generally the ones that need to be in there the most.”

However, he said the legislature has been “dishonest” in dealing with the problem.

“I think it’s frankly dishonest that our legislature is doing this because they’re setting high penalties for people, for instance five years in prison,” he said. “But then, they’re turning around and saying they only have to serve nine months of a five-year sentence.”

The same budget bill also set the minimum time to serve on a one-year sentence at two months, which Bartley said sends dual messages.

“They’re wanting to say they’re tough on crime by putting these big penalties in,” Bartley said. “But then they’re coming in the back door and saying you only have to serve two months of a one-year sentence. They’re doing it under the radar by letting them out the back door of the prison when we put them in the front.”

The Louisville Courier-Journal reported that an analysis it recently conducted shows 14 percent of the 1,100 inmates released early under the program have reoffended.

Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway filed a complaint in Franklin Circuit Court earlier this month, asking the court to halt the Department of Corrections program.

Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip J. Shepherd refused last week to grant injunctive relief. However, Shepherd did say in an order that Conway “raised a substantial question to law as to whether the most recent interpretation of this budget language is an unauthorized retroactive application of the law.

Shepherd set a hearing for Nov. 10 on whether the injunction should be granted.

Shelly Johnson, a spokesperson for Conway’s office, said Friday the attorney general’s main contention over the program is that the Department of Corrections is illegally interpreting the provisions of the budget bill.

Also, Johnson said, the early release program violates Truth in Sentencing laws, under which juries are fully made aware of penalty ranges and the amount of time that must be served under those ranges.

The early release program will also face a challenge in next year’s legislative session. State Sen. Ken Winters, District 1, has prefiled a bill that would delete language in the 2008 budget bill related to the calculation of probation and parole credit.

State Sen. Ray Jones, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he cannot comment directly on the program because the committee has not yet been briefed on it. But, he said he expects the issue will be brought up when the committee begins meeting soon.

“If these people in the Department of Corrections are releasing people that are a danger to society, we’re going to take steps to immediately address that, either through legislation or whatever,” Jones said.

However, Jones said something must be done about the costs of incarceration. This year alone, the state will spend $400 million incarcerating about 23,000 inmates.

“If we don’t get this crisis, as it pertains to corrections, under control, it’s going to prevent money from going to areas where it’s needed,” Jones said.

In the meantime, however, Bartley said he fears more serious crimes being committed by the reoffenders.

“I’m just sitting on pins and needles, just waiting, watching the papers to see who’s the first person murdered by one of these early parolees,” he said. “And it’s going to happen.”